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RIO DE JANEIRO—“Just a second,” said Curt Harnett, whipping his cellphone to his ear, “I’m trying to get them to turn it up.” The Tragically Hip were opening with “Fifty Mission Cap,” and before the Olympic chef de mission connected, the Canadians seated on the couches and the chairs and the benches at Canada House in Rio started to chant. “Turn it up! Turn it up!”

They turned it up. They kept turning it up. It was Saturday night in Rio, and the Tragically Hip were on the CBC. The Canadian Olympic Committee considered asking every Canadian in Rio with a passport to come to Canada House. They didn’t have room.

Rio has unfolded a world away from the Hip’s farewell tour for Gord Downie, until this night. The last show in Kingston was the end of this beautiful touring funeral, and people here wanted to see it.

At the front of the room, feet from the big screen, Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies sat, enraptured. Over there, Tom Hall, a 2008 Olympian working for the COC. Tom’s brother James plays bass for Sam Roberts; he’s met the Hip; the family loves them. In the middle of the room, kayaker Adam van Koeverden stood, trying not to cry. He figured he would cry.

“He’s the best,” said van Koeverden, who first met Downie in 2004. “He’s the poet laureate of Canada, hands down. That’s him.”

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The Olympics are a big thing, but that concert meant a lot to a lot of people here. Everyone had a story. Jeff Fischer, the agent for high jumper Derek Drouin and decathlete Damian Warner, had just been sent a selfie from his daughter, who was at the show: in the selfie was Justin Trudeau in a jean jacket. Fischer also works with San Jose Sharks star Logan Couture, who tweeted about getting Hip tickets before the Stanley Cup final. When the Sharks arrived in Pittsburgh, every Canadian on the team had a black hat that read “The Hip” waiting for them. When Gord first met van Koeverden in September of 2004, he said, “Adam van Koeverden, great f------ job, man.” The kayaker was stunned he knew his name, and he never forgot it. Later, Robertson told him, Gord remembers everyone’s name. He’ll meet you once, and three years later, he’ll remember.

“I love Gord,” said van Koeverden, who said the first song he learned to play on the guitar was “New Orleans is Sinking.”

“He’s the nicest person I know. We have the same chiropractor.”

We can be a small country, sometimes, even when we’re big.

Canada has had a great Olympics, and this felt like some kind of celebration. One COC staffer said, “This is my first Olympics, and I’ve been here for three weeks, and I feel like this is the moment I’m going to remember forever.”

“I spend all day here, every day, and I watch Canadians come in here,” said Hall. “And the parents are in here worrying about their kids, supporting each other. And when something like this happens, you know, it’s one of the most Canadian places in the world right now.”

“I have to keep telling myself, this isn’t the end of Gord’s life,” said Robertson. “I wish I could be there. It’s a really beautiful thing.”

“I don’t know: As athletes, we get asked about representing Canada, and what that means, and what it means to be Canadian,” says paddler Mark Oldershaw, who remembers downloading the band’s entire catalogue at the beginning of the Napster generation. “And sometimes it’s hard to identify what that is, exactly, because we’re such a multicultural society, there’s so much that does define us.

“But when I hear it, it makes me feel Canadian, and makes me nostalgic. It’s incredibly emotional. People are saying, I wish I was there right now, and we’re at the Olympics right now.”

The Tragically Hip are not close to the only Canada. We’re not one people, and that’s good. But there aren’t a lot of things that happen in Canada where a huge number of us huddle around the fire together and cheer for the same team. The Olympics are one. This, for a lot of us, was another. People here danced, linked arms, held their loved ones. They were young and old, men and women, Canadian. They sang along: Oldershaw, to Scared; Robertson, to Nautical Disaster. Everyone has a favourite, or more than one.

And there we were: This one room in this crazy city sitting and singing and crying while our country’s beautiful strange doomed poet gave his last dance. Robertson sat with his wife holding him, and he held one of his sons, and he rubbed his back, absent-mindedly. After the first encore Robertson was asked what he thought. He couldn’t talk, for a second.

“I . . . I’m . . . I’m just spent,” he said. “I have no words.” He sat there with his wife and son and watched his old friend pour what was left of his heart out. “It’s amazing,” he said, finally.

He couldn’t say any more. His eyes were so red. van Koeverden rubbed his eyes, too. So many people did. It came down to the last few songs — “Locked in the Trunk of a Car,” “Gift Shop” and finally “Ahead by a Century,” people were mouthing the words, and then it was over and Gord was soaked in sweat and those five Canadians stood together for a little longer, and then they said goodbye. In the room, people hugged the person next to them, squeezed an arm, held someone’s hand, wiped away tears.

The Olympics are such an emotional place. People cry when they win, or when they lose, and the best part of the Olympics, the true purest soul of them, is where that comes from. It’s a measure of how much heart is being poured out, how much love there is in there. It shows, at the end, how much they care.

Did you go to the final Tragically Hip show in Kingston, Ont.? If so, please send us your best pictures of the concert for a chance to be published in the Toronto Star and online.

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